tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22872285905750364522024-03-05T00:26:28.519-05:00The Mojito Literary SocietyTake some sugary Southern charm, three limes, and a whole bunch of musings both literary and otherwise. Throw in some balmy southern heat (just enough to make everyone feel sexy and sweaty). Juice it up with enough rum to get a little heady. Spice with mint leaves, fresh and feisty. Take a large sip, sit back, and enjoy.Mojito Literary Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03670474213779366886noreply@blogger.comBlogger128125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-54848029421643119482017-06-21T02:30:00.000-04:002017-06-21T14:34:08.961-04:00How to Make the Perfect Mojito<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS7IwN_rqC6JcfG_pehzQACApUHvwqGvJ9eKtN3IXhUqOPsLRKn2jRb7LN7Q7jxeSvviLtjOTcfscJJXm6wDQoqi5wutNhBJndeXySHrGhB7u1sLTmi6q9wSazXzPcdMdsT9URlPg94Gw/s1600/mojito.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS7IwN_rqC6JcfG_pehzQACApUHvwqGvJ9eKtN3IXhUqOPsLRKn2jRb7LN7Q7jxeSvviLtjOTcfscJJXm6wDQoqi5wutNhBJndeXySHrGhB7u1sLTmi6q9wSazXzPcdMdsT9URlPg94Gw/s320/mojito.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An important aspect of the Mojito Literary Society is—of course—the mojito. The derivation of the name is unclear; it could refer to mojo, a lime-flavored seasoning mixture popular in Cuban cuisine, or to the word mojadito, Spanish for "a little wet." A favorite drink of Ernest Hemingway (whose graffiti praising the drink can still be seen on the walls of his favorite Cuban bar), the mojito is a deceptively simple mixture of five basic ingredients: rum, lime juice, cane sugar, club soda, and fresh mint leaves (traditionally yerba buena in Cuba, but most commonly spearmint or peppermint in the US).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've had <i>many</i> mojitos. Some have been exquisite; others have been as limp and tasteless as salad in a glass. I make my own at home regularly, and they are quite tasty if I do say so myself (and I do). Still, when it comes to mixology, there's no greater authority than my friend Chris Milligan. He writes the blog <a href="http://santafebarman.wordpress.com/">The Sante Fe Barman</a> and is, IMHO, a genius with all things spirited. When I asked him to explain how to make a perfect mojito, he graciously obliged.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So here it is, folks, straight from someone who knows.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Perfect Mojito</b></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In
a 12 oz glass, muddle ten or twelve Mint leaves with 3/4 oz simple
syrup and 1/2 oz fresh lime juice. Add ice, 2 oz white rum, and fill
with club soda. Using a long handled spoon, pull the mint from the
bottom of the glass to combine. You are also mixing in the lime and
simple syrup. Garnish with a lime wheel.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Important Mixology Skills and Information</b>!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Muddling</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">—the
idea in this drink is to extract the oils from the mint without tearing
the leaves, so be gentle. Robert Hess does a great demo on muddling
(find that <a href="http://www.smallscreennetwork.com/video/35">here</a> on Small Screen Network.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Measure, Measure, Measure. Get a small OXO measuring cup or jigger. This is KEY.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That brings us back to the glassware. If your glasses are bigger than 12 oz, you will need to adjust.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A lime wheel is a lime cut in a circle from pole to pole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Simple syrup</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">—1
lb. BY WEIGHT of sugar and 8 oz of water (filtered) by volume. Place in
a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and
simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool to room temperature. This keeps for 3-5
days or add a shot of vodka to keep for 3 weeks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In a 12 oz glass, muddle ten or twelve Mint leaves with 3/4 oz simple syrup and 1/2 oz fresh lime juice. Add ice, 2 oz white rum, and fill with club soda. Using a long handled spoon, pull the mint from the bottom of the glass to combine. You are also mixing in the lime and simple syrup. Garnish with a lime wheel.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Important Mixology Skills and Information</b>!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Muddling</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">—the idea in this drink is to extract the oils from the mint without tearing the leaves, so be gentle. Robert Hess does a great demo on muddling (find that <a href="http://www.smallscreennetwork.com/video/35">here</a> on Small Screen Network.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Measure, Measure, Measure. Get a small OXO measuring cup or jigger. This is KEY.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That brings us back to the glassware. If your glasses are bigger than 12 oz, you will need to adjust.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A lime wheel is a lime cut in a circle from pole to pole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Simple syrup</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">—1 lb. BY WEIGHT of sugar and 8 oz of water (filtered) by volume. Place in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool to room temperature. This keeps for 3-5 days or add a shot of vodka to keep for 3 weeks.</span>Mojito Literary Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03670474213779366886noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-27394199049385158212014-02-04T13:13:00.002-05:002014-02-04T13:15:14.584-05:00Laura's author signing with Prosecco and organic Italian gelato<h1 style="font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 2.4em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">
<strong>Do you love Italian gelato? Sparkling Prosecco? Books and fine literature? </strong><a data-mce-href="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/prosecco-gold-arrangement-1.jpg" href="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/prosecco-gold-arrangement-1.jpg" style="color: #743399;"><br /></a></h1>
<h2 style="font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">
Oh, do I have the event for you!</h2>
<h3 style="font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 1.4em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/prosecco-gold-arrangement-1.jpg" href="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/prosecco-gold-arrangement-1.jpg" style="color: #743399;"><img alt="Prosecco-gold-arrangement-1" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-2103 alignleft" data-mce-src="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/prosecco-gold-arrangement-1.jpg?w=100" src="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/prosecco-gold-arrangement-1.jpg?w=100" height="150" style="border: 0px; cursor: default; display: inline; float: left; margin: 4px 24px 12px 0px;" width="100" /></a>Laura and Joel (Caplan, owner of Cafe' Gelatohhh and Italian ice cream chef extraordinaire) will be giving an informal meet and greet with sparkling Prosecco and delicious house-made organic gelato from Savannah's own Cafe' Gelatohhhh <strong>at Hattie's Bookstore in Brunswick, GA </strong></h3>
<h3 data-mce-style="text-align: center;" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 1.4em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: center;">
<strong>Friday, February the 7th from 5-7pm</strong></h3>
<div data-mce-style="text-align: center;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: center;">
<a data-mce-href="http://www.hattiesbooks.com/news.html" href="http://www.hattiesbooks.com/news.html" style="color: #743399;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" data-mce-src="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/83bf9-blogheader.jpg" src="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/83bf9-blogheader.jpg" height="73" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; margin: 0px auto 12px;" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
<img alt="SafeInYourHead" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1657" data-mce-src="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/safeinyourhead.jpg?w=97" src="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/safeinyourhead.jpg?w=97" height="150" style="border: 0px; cursor: default; display: inline; float: left; margin: 4px 24px 12px 0px;" width="97" /></div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://lauravaleri.com/" href="http://lauravaleri.com/" style="color: #743399;">Laura Valeri</a>, born in Piombino, Italy, will sign copies of her latest book, <b style="color: black;">Safe in Your Head, </b>published by Stephen F. Austin University Press. <b style="color: black;">Safe in Your Head,</b> a finalist in the 2011 SFA Press Prize for Fiction tells the epic story of "three women who struggle to embrace their future as they are haunted by the ghost of the past." The stories include tales of war, love, cooking and magic.</div>
<div class="mceTemp mceIEcenter" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<dl class="wp-caption aligncenter" data-mce-style="width: 160px;" id="attachment_2111" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border: none; clear: both; color: #888888; margin: 10px auto 20px; max-width: 632px !important; padding: 4px; width: 160px;">
<dt class="wp-caption-dt" style="color: black; font-weight: bold;"><a data-mce-href="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/gelato.jpg" href="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/gelato.jpg" style="color: #743399;"><img alt="yummy gelato (Italian ice cream)" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-2111" data-mce-src="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/gelato.jpg?w=150" src="http://lauravaleri.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/gelato.jpg?w=150" height="99" style="-webkit-user-drag: none; border: 0px none; cursor: default; margin: 5px; padding: 0px;" width="150" /></a></dt>
<dd class="wp-caption-dd" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px;">yummy gelato (Italian ice cream)</dd></dl>
</div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
SEE YOU THERE!!!</div>
Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-67755744080118314282014-01-28T23:26:00.001-05:002014-01-28T23:29:00.184-05:00Mojito Sister Loose on the Writing Community<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" class="alignnone" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/83/225640828_3c4a975b17_b.jpg" height="266" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amelia Island Book Festival</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Join writer <a href="http://www.lauravaleri.com/" target="_blank">Laura Valeri </a>at the <a href="http://lauravaleri.com/2014/01/29/join-me-in-amelia-island-for-a-writers-workshop-and-festival/Amelia" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Amelia Island Book Festival and Workshop this February 21 (Author Workshop) and February 22</a> (Book Festival Signing).<br />
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On Friday, Laura will be giving a workshop on images in fiction, particularly to:</div>
<ul style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 24px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">find inspiration</li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">focus your ideas</li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">immerse into character</li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">explore a historical period</li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">create great story openings</li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">complete story endings</li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">more…</li>
</ul>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
There will be lots to do, and if you join the Workshop, there will be a lunch with David Baldacci.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Hope to see you in beautiful Amelia Island!</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
(And check out my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Your-Head-Laura-Valeri/dp/1622880110" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">book</a> if you haven’t yet!)</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="" class="alignnone" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511LUwGmEGL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" height="346" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="225" /></div>
Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-3730166943765176472013-11-03T12:52:00.000-05:002013-11-03T12:52:09.732-05:00Happy Diwali<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Diwali_Diya.jpg/640px-Diwali_Diya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Diwali_Diya.jpg/640px-Diwali_Diya.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Tonight, my Mojito brothers and sisters, it's time to clean up the house and light a candle to welcome Diwali, the festival of lights.<br />
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Diwali is a Hindu festival that marks the end of the harvest season. In India, the celebration is a way of giving thanks for the abundance of the current harvest and for welcoming a prosperous harvest in the next year.<br />
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Traditionally, Diwali is associated with goddess Lakshmi, the first of the gods to emerge from the "churning milk" of the cosmic ocean. She is also the goddess who triumphed in battle over the demons of darkness. So, Mojito sisters, this is a good night to meditate on the aspect of the feminine that is represented in Lakshmi, a major ass-kicking goddess who is said to be the power of material creation, the shakti that corresponds to Vishnu/creation.<br />
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Lakshmi is associated with abundance, inner wisdom, wealth, prosperity, fertility, luck, beauty and love. She is the feminine counterpart of the lord of creation, and it is said that in every incarnation of Vishnu (as in Krishna and Rama, etc.) so does Lakshmi, his consort also incarnate (as Rada, Sita, etc.) because the two cannot be apart.<br />
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More importantly, the festival celebrates the triumph of light over darkness. So as to be sure that I am not making any faux pas, I am quoting here straight from Wikipedia:</h3>
<h4>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali" target="_blank">While Diwali is popularly known as the "festival of lights", the most significant spiritual meaning behind it is "the awareness of the inner light". Central to Hindu philosophy (primarily the <i><span style="color: #0b0080;">Yoga</span></i>, <i><span style="color: #0b0080;">Vedanta</span></i>, and <i><span style="color: #0b0080;">Samkhya</span></i> schools of <i><span style="color: #0b0080;">Hindu philosophy</span></i>) is the belief that there is something beyond the physical body and mind which is pure, infinite, and eternal, called the <i><span style="color: #0b0080;">Atman</span></i>. </a></span></h4>
<h4>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The celebration of Diwali as the "victory of good over evil", refers to the light of higher knowledge dispelling all ignorance, the ignorance that masks one's true nature, not as the body, but as the unchanging, infinite,</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="color: #0b0080;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">immanent</span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">and</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="color: #0b0080;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">transcendent</span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">reality. With this awakening comes compassion and the awareness of the oneness of all things (higher knowledge). This brings</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><i style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #0b0080;">ananda</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">(joy or peace). Just as we celebrate the birth of our physical being, Diwali is the celebration of this Inner Light.</span></a></h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali" target="_blank">While the story behind Diwali and the manner of celebration varies from region to region (festive fireworks, <span style="color: #0b0080;">worship</span>, lights, sharing of sweets), the essence is the same – to rejoice in the Inner Light (<span style="color: #0b0080;">Atman</span>) or the underlying Reality of all things (<span style="color: #0b0080;">Brahman</span>).</a></span></h4>
<div>
Although I am not Hindu in either religion or race, I am nonetheless fascinated by Lakshmi and Diwali, and every year, if I remember, I light candles and clean my house, for it is said that Lakshmi never enters a house that's dirty.</div>
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<div>
By this small and simple ritual I welcome the light of reason and the light of peace into my home and heart, that I may wake from ignorance and be embraced with the abundance of wisdom and of inner peace with is the birthright of every human being.</div>
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And if you want to make an extra umph on Lakshmi, her mantra is Om Sri Maha Lakshmiyai Namah.</div>
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Happy Diwali.</div>
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Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-61657643607807628672013-10-31T02:00:00.000-04:002013-10-31T11:21:20.380-04:00MLS True Ghost Stories: Remembering The Dead on All Hallows Eve<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i.images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-2281795412-hd/Sydney/Landmarks/Waverley_Cemetery/sydney_waverley_cemetery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-2281795412-hd/Sydney/Landmarks/Waverley_Cemetery/sydney_waverley_cemetery.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I was going to tell you all about the time when my family was sitting at the kitchen table at lunchtime, and we heard someone fall down the staircase, hit the wall, and land in the vestibule right by the front door. We searched the house inside and out, didn't find a person nor a tree limb nor anything else that could have made the whole house shake as it did. But that's all the story there's to tell and though it was frightening to me at the time, in retrospect, it's just another spook story.<br />
<br />
Instead I have been compelled to tell you about a different kind of ghost story. It's about the ghosts that lurk quietly, not to scare us, but, perhaps to watch us and help us not to get into any more trouble than we already get into all by our lonesomes.<br />
<br />
For instance, when in the late 90's my sister called me from Italy to tell me that my grandmother had passed away, I already knew. That night I had been sleeping soundly, when something in my dream shifted abruptly. I felt my grandmother entering my dream with such vividness that the emotion I felt in seeing her sucked me awake. I asked my sister what time my grandmother had passed away, but even before she confirmed my suspicions, I already knew.<br />
<br />
She visited a couple of times since then, too. I cannot mistake the smell of my dear grandmother, that mix between cigarette smoke and chef's soap. When she's around, I say hello to her in my head. I imagine she's always surprised that I know she's come.<br />
<br />
I've also had some other lucky visitations. The most vivid of them was when I was 8 or 9 years old and I'd gotten lost on a mountaintop during a snow storm during ski camp. The lifts had closed down but my brother and I had got stuck on the top of the mountain, and there was no way to get to safety but on skis. An instructor had tried to help us out, but my brother was so small that the wind kept sucking him up, so the instructor tucked him between his legs and propped him on top of his own skies. That was enough of a balancing act that he didn't look back to see if I was following, and he didn't notice that, though I was bigger than my brother, the wind was slowing me down. Pretty soon my brother and the man disappeared into the mist and snow, out of my sight, and shortly after that, their voices were too faint to hear. There was nothing but ravines around me and trees ahead of me. I didn't know the way. <br />
<br />
I was talking to myself, saying something like, "God, I'm going to die," mewling and thinking of all the stuff I'd seen on the news of people getting lost on mountains and freezing to death, when I heard a calm, friendly voice behind me, a man who asked me if I needed help. I was a little embarrassed to have been caught talking to myself and I barely nodded. He told me to take off my goggles and slipped them in the pocket of his ski jacket, but I never actually saw this man above the waist. I never looked up to see his face. He led me down the mountain and shielded me from the strong gusts of wind, and when we got down to the shelter he helped me take off my skies, then asked me if I wanted some hot chocolate. Still without looking at him I nodded yes. He led me inside the chateau and stepped into the crowd.<br />
<br />
The moment he did, I heard my father's voice behind me: "Where have you been?"<br />
<br />
I told my father everything.<br />
<br />
"Where are your googles?" my father wanted to know.<br />
<br />
I pointed to the crowd where I thought I might recognize the man who had gone to buy me a cup of hot chocolate, who still had my ski googles in his pocket, but I realized I didn't know him. He could have been anyone. We waited and waited, but the man never came back.<br />
<br />
Was he a ghost? A dream? An angel?<br />
<br />
Does it matter?<br />
<br />
One time as I was driving on a highway towards work, I got sandwiched between a slow truck before me and a car speeding fast into the highway from a ramp to my right. With no time to step on the breaks I had to cut off a woman in a corvette on my left lane. I then slipped back into the right lane to give the corvette room to pass me, but the corvette had also slipped back to the right lane, and seeing me maneuver like that, the woman driving the corvette leaned heavily on the horn. She passed me to my left, but not content, she slowed down so that we traveled at the same speed. She leaned on the horn again, staring at me and cursing me out. I flipped her the bird. I saw her gape at me. I saw the look that came over her face with her unsavory decision. I saw her spin the steering wheel, her lips between her teeth, obviously intent on slamming her corvette into my station wagon. I saw the hood of her car nearing towards mine.<br />
<br />
This is the part I still don't understand. Her car didn't hit me. Her car swerved as if pushed away by an invisible forced and did a 360 on the highway. I barely swished by and saw the corvette spinning in the rearview. Luckily she did not crash, nor did anyone behind her on that busy highway. Something similar happened a few years later when I was stopped at a light and an out-of-control car screeched and careered towards me only to swerve on a split second, again as if by pushed away by some invisible force.<br />
<br />
And this ghost visitation seems to be a family matter. When my sister was a baby, my mother woke up from her crying. Slow to respond she was surprised that before she got to the baby's room, the baby had stopped crying already. She peeked softly into the baby's room, careful not to make noise. A woman in a WWII nursing uniform was bent over the cradle -- or so it seemed in the shadows. My mother asked, "Who is that?" but there was already only just darkness. Another time, during a particularly trying night, my mother saw and heard her father call her name: he was dead then already twenty years. He was an illusion of light, a whisper of the wind, but he had enough substance to say her name, to ask what is the matter, in a loving enough voice that my mother jolted out of her sadness and into wonderment.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, I was working on an email in response to something my sister had sent me that had made me angry. Needless to say, what I was writing wasn't kind. When I hit the send button, however, my gmail said "There is a problem with the server. Please try again later." The thought hit me that it might have been a sign not to engage in an argument with my sister, but I hit send again. And again a few moments later. Still, the email wouldn't go through. <br />
<br />
To appease my guilt, I began to edit the email down. For every paragraph that I edited or cut, I hit send, and still the same error message came back. I checked my internet connection. It was working. I checked FB. It was working. I tried to send my message again and still the same server error popped up. This went on for a while. I went on FB and asked if anyone else was having problems with gmail. Nobody else seemed to be having problems. <br />
<br />
Finally, my better wisdom prevailed and I deleted the email to my sister. Within a few seconds, I was able to send and receive email again.<br />
<br />
Was it a ghost or an angel or just coincidence?<br />
<br />
I don't know, but I did remembered then that Halloween is, after all, not just about ghosts and monsters. It's also about remembering those who passed away, and about honoring the "hallowed" saints who look over us from that world beyond.<br />
<br />
So it occurs to me that the dead want to be remembered, not just as spooks and apparitions, but also for their best hopes for us.<br />
<br />
It reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Susan Mitchell, The Dead, from which I will quote only a few lines out of respect for copyright:<br />
<br />
Some dead find their way to our houses.<br />
They go up to the attics.<br />
They read the letters they sent us, insatiable<br />
for signs of their love.<br />
<br />
So on this All Hallows' Eve I'd like to express my gratitude for those who watch over us, and also offer a little prayer for our ancestors: that they may thrive in peace, love and joy, wherever they may be.<br />
<br />
______________<br />
Laura Valeri is the author of Safe in Your Head, which has ghost stories in it, and the author of The Kind of Things Saints Do.<br />
<br />Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-51976478593745301002013-10-30T09:13:00.001-04:002013-10-30T09:18:52.370-04:00Day 1: Don't Worry, Honey, It's Just The Paranormal Messin' Around by Leah Rhyne<div style="line-height: 17px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jon Bon Jovi Comin' for YOU!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">A long time ago, in a state far, far away, I was just a little girl growing up in the medium-sized borough of Sayreville, New Jersey. The most notable thing by far about our town was that it is (as the signs say) the boyhood home of Jon Bon Jovi. No lie. But that’s not exactly scary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">I mean, there were always rumors that in a far corner a neighborhood known as Tangletown sat the original home of Bloody Mary, but I think most old towns think they can boast the original home of Bloody Mary. So also not exactly scary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">But, you know, it’s New Jersey, and sometimes that’s scary enough. We are the home of the Jersey Devil after all. Ever heard of him? He’s this little fiendish creature, born of witches or voodoo or something equally devilish, who lives deep in the forests of the Pine Barrens and feeds on the souls of innocent children. Or something. It was enough to give me nightmares as a little one, though it’s certainly not enough to scare me now.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">But (and this is a big but): I do believe in ghosts. Wholeheartedly. And I do believe someone ghostly loves to mess with my husband and me whenever we watch scary movies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Here’s my story.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Have you ever seen <i>The Ring</i>? You know, that ridiculously terrifying movie about a little girl who comes out of the television to kill people after they’ve watched this atrocious avant garde slasher flick? Yeah, that one. The first time I saw it was in a movie theater with an old friend, and it scared the pants off me. I screamed. I hid my face. I wanted to run away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">When my husband and I first lived together, I used to talk about this movie as one of my favorite scary films. My husband had never seen it, though, so one night we rented it (this was back before NetFlix, if you can believe that) and settled in to watch it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">We had the lights out. We had the windows closed. We had popcorn. In short, we were ready for a good time. And the movie was just as scary as I remembered it. There was Naomi Watts, looking all gorgeous and terrified. There was the girl with the long stringy hair. There she was, about to come out of the TV in one of the most climactic scenes in horror movie history.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">And suddenly…our lights surged! Our TV blazed! Everything turned on in our living room, and then everything turned off! I screamed. I also fell off the couch. My husband leaped to his feet, his eyes searching around the room. We looked outside, but no one on our street seemed to be experiencing electrical difficulties.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">It was just us. But no biggie, right? Just a random power surge? Well, then. Explain this one. It was a year or so later. We’d rented <i>1408</i>, the John Cusack flick based on the Stephen King short story of the same name. This movie is all about ghosts in a haunted old hotel. All the scary stuff starts happening after a single piece of electronic equipment – a clock radio, I believe – turns on in the middle of the night, all on its own.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Well, we watched the entire movie and had a good time with it. It was just creepy enough that even though the end was lame, I went to bed with the heebie-jeebies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">A couple hours later, we were both sound asleep in our bedroom. In our bathroom sat, silent, an electric razor that made an extremely loud whirring sound whenever someone turned on the cleaning cycle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Well, something (someone??) pressed that button while we were both sound asleep. Something turned that razor on. The whirring sound jerked us both awake. We both jumped up. I leaped from the bed, terrified. My husband unplugged the razor and it quieted back down, but it took us forever to get back to sleep.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’ll be honest. We don’t watch many scary movies around here anymore. You could blame it on the fact that we have a kid now, and she doesn’t like to listen to scary things while she’s trying to go to sleep. Or you could blame it on the fact that something (someone?) probably still likes to mess with us whenever we’re silly enough to mess with ourselves, and frankly, I don’t want him to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Tag, Laura Valeri! You're it!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">(This post first appeared on Little Miss Train Wreck, a blog of fashion, reviews and author interviews. Visit <a href="http://littlemisstrainwreck.com/">littlemisstrainwreck.com</a> for more information. Photo Courtesy of Hyena Reality at Free Digital Photos.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>* * *</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi04MN6P-w4P-6PzM_lezlBuXrENg5Wz-QahpdbL1mmZgoDV5MScGfm-q_hmSi4JzFbVRCAu_H6TIEivr88_n7tLzbvyMZOtw_Pqp_KGrnhlMndFF8sE5VVuiAmNvFlZVfpmlIH5DDBXcA/s1600/leahrhyne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi04MN6P-w4P-6PzM_lezlBuXrENg5Wz-QahpdbL1mmZgoDV5MScGfm-q_hmSi4JzFbVRCAu_H6TIEivr88_n7tLzbvyMZOtw_Pqp_KGrnhlMndFF8sE5VVuiAmNvFlZVfpmlIH5DDBXcA/s200/leahrhyne.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Leah Rhyne, author of the<i> Undead America</i> series, is a Jersey girl who's been in the South so long she's
lost her accent...but never her attitude. After spending most of her
childhood watching movies like <i>Star Wars</i>, <i>Alien(s)</i>, and <i>A Nightmare On
Elm Street</i>, and reading books like Stephen King's <i>The Shining </i>or <i>It</i>,
Leah loves writing tales of horror and science-fiction. She lives with her husband, daughter, and a small menagerie of pets. In her barely-there spare time, she loves running.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Visit Leah at her website: <a href="http://www.leahrhyne.com/">www.leahrhyne.com/</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Days-Campfire-Nights-Rhyne/dp/1771274239" target="_blank"><i>Zombie Days, Campfire Nights: Book One of the Undead America series</i></a> -- Millions died when the zombie plague swept the country. For the survivors, the journey has just begun. </span><br />
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Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-2863825931768017002013-10-29T11:00:00.000-04:002013-10-29T11:00:09.469-04:00Day 2: Ghost in the Machine by Joel Caplan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s3-media3.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/U-z-goH0cqWXl9QjLzW7Iw/l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://s3-media3.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/U-z-goH0cqWXl9QjLzW7Iw/l.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Ghost in the Machine</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-4d9e3835-ed6c-b68c-574a-f37b26bd1dc7" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I shall preface this by saying that I am an honorary member of the Mojito Literary Society, being a man, and am only granted this privilege as I house and feed the other members, on occasion, and also do my best to get them drunk. I have photos of multiple women writers, all writing, in my living room. I could say that’s a Halloween horror story, but it isn’t: I love and cherish these women and am honored to have them in my life. So on to the story.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It isn’t a horror story. It is a ghost story. There is very little drama. This is a small account of a very timid, but effectual ghost. It is mostly silly, but definitely real.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I run a gelateria in the historic part of Savannah, Georgia. The shop is in a four story building, which includes a basement. My shop is on the first, ground level, floor. What is interesting about this particular building is that the top floor of it was used as a slave auction house during the rain, and until recently, the trappings of the slave trade were still there (raised floor, hooks in the wall to attach shackles to, etc). The outdoor slave sales happened about about a block away. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two blocks away from me is the First African Baptist Church, which was a major link in the Underground Railway, the delivery system that rescued slaves and propelled them north to a hopefully better life. Visitors today can see the floorboards, with air holes, that hid the slaves sheltered underneath. What is interesting here is that a school had been constructed for slave children, and that school was in the basement of the building where my gelateria is currently located.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To put it succinctly, my business is in a building that witnessed the sale of slaves and the education of escaped slave children. All at the same time. You may draw your own conclusions about how this energy may have affected my space.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the past ten years we have experienced multiple odd phenomena, all of them having to do with screws and bolts. All manner of things come unscrewed, and the screws themselves disappear. I have seen screws come out of place from mechanisms that do not experience vibration. Screws come loose from internal mechanisms that cannot be accessed without significant dissection. One evening a screw came loose from an ice cream cone holder, and the plate that the screw held in place, about 16 inches in diameter, flew across the store. It did not hurt the employee that witnessed it, but she was surely spooked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have learned to live with and accept this ghost. We have music in the store, and if we leave on jazz, all thru the night, the spirit seems to be content and leaves my machinery alone.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tag, you're it, Leah.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joel Caplan is the owner of Cafe' Gelatohhh in Savannah, GA and an honorary member of the Mojito Literary Society.</span></div>
Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-25216834709869814222013-10-28T00:39:00.000-04:002013-10-28T00:41:29.167-04:00Day 3: Popcorn Ghost by Rebecca Johns<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5bHSRin6hvMkatjOpH4wVFUoeNkkt4PR-JZfNq7Trc97_TXzrUg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5bHSRin6hvMkatjOpH4wVFUoeNkkt4PR-JZfNq7Trc97_TXzrUg" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">This story comes from my in-laws, at least four of whom were witnesses to the events I'm about to recount. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">My husband's grandmother during her life was very fond of popcorn. She'd make a pan of it every night and eat it watching old movies on TV. My mother-in-law says that the house constantly smelled of popcorn.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">One night many years after she died, my in-laws went to visit my husband's grandfather at his house in Northwest Indiana. He was a bit of a shut-in then, with strange habits. They weren't at all sure he'd even open the door. But when he let them in that night, they smelled a very strong scent of popcorn. My mother-in-law asked her father, "Have you been eating popcorn?" and he said, "Popcorn? Are you nuts?" because he didn't have any teeth. But there it was: the distinctive smell of popcorn. And my father-in-law smelled it just as strongly.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">They might not have thought too much of it, though, except that a few months later they took the kids (my brother-in-law Matt and sister-in-law Erin) to visit their grandfather. As they were pulling up to the house, the front door opened, and Erin, who was maybe ten at the time, said, "Who's that lady next to Popo?" and Matt (12) said, "Yeah, who IS that?"</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">When they got to the front door they asked their grandfather if there was a lady in the house with him, a friend or a nurse. No, he said. He was alone.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">But Matt and Erin swear to this day they saw her standing next to him.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Tag You're It: Joel</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">___________</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Rebecca Johns is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Countess-Novel-Elizabeth-Bathory-ebook/dp/B003F3PMYS/ref=la_B001JRZFVM_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382934893&sr=1-1" target="_blank">The Countess: A Novel of Elizabeth Bathory</a>, and of the novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Icebergs-ebook/dp/B002UM5BJ6/ref=la_B001JRZFVM_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382934947&sr=1-2" target="_blank">Icebergs</a></span>Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-88948392214214049122013-10-27T02:00:00.000-04:002013-10-27T02:00:06.073-04:00Day 4: Emma in the Ouija by Laura Valeri<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSd9gzOxZHPFj9BmzNPfUaRk-VpcUG38Lni6Y8WoNQ6x7nCMtqPhQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSd9gzOxZHPFj9BmzNPfUaRk-VpcUG38Lni6Y8WoNQ6x7nCMtqPhQ" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This time I’m going to tell a Ouija story I haven’t yet told. It’s from the time i was in college at NYU and rather than studying for tests, my friends and I much preferred gathering in one of the cramped dormitory rooms, drink rum and coke out of plastic cups and play Tears For Fears on a boom box. Somehow one night the conversation got onto Ouija. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-21ec85bf-ed9e-e195-f2ae-2bf9fa140b55" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My friend Vinny, the only one of us who wasn’t dorm-bound, was intrigued by the stories some of us had told of playing with Ouija board and things getting increasingly weird, so he went to a toy store or two, only to be let down that nobody carried such an outdated thing anymore. It was the dawn of the age of video-games. Tower Records was still on Houston.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then one morning he stepped out of his home, walked for half a block and literally stepped on a Ouija board that someone was hawking on that Brooklyn sidewalk. Those sort of things, I’m told, happen a lot with Ouija.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vinny arrived one late evening at our dormitory and slipped it out from under his windbreaker with a winsome smile and a chirping, “Surprise!.” Before long we all had our fingers on the planchette, trying to make it move. With collective will, it’s not hard to make something happen. Soon we were asking stupid questions at a piece of hard cardboard and getting mostly misspelled, terse answers. Still, no one wanted to leave the door room, not even for more rum, afraid we would miss something funny from our four favorite Ouija ghosts:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Emma, an 18th century woman who died of some kind of fever</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mo, the guttermouth who died in Vietnam</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mary, a mostly shy ghost who seemed to like speaking only to Clemencia, my roommate</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And Andy, who died in a motorcycle accident and whenever we asked him where he was standing, would say, “On your tit.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(It wasn’t until months later, when I woke up one morning to stare at my only-half read Jane Austen masterpiece that I realized that all the initials spelled Emma).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before long, a room that was intended to be a tight abode for two smallish college girls became a speakeasy with smoke tufts blowing from under the door, music playing late in the night, and voices ringing with questions like, “Which one of us will be the first to marry? No, no, wait, I have a question but I don’t want to ask it out loud. Can you read my mind?” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dormitory door was always open and boys and girls were streaming in between classes to get their turn at touching the planchette and asking after a grandfather, aunt, or lost cousin. One girl became convinced she was talking to her long gone grandmother, in Greek. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Soon the room began to smell of feet, bad breath, and unwashed laundry. Our little gatherings didn't sound so fun anymore when we were accusing one another of hogging too much time or for not being a “good enough conduit.” We were all so caught up in this addictive intercourse with the other world that we didn’t even care when Vinny began to shout that he’d had enough, that we stank as badly as that room, and that we all needed to cool it and get some fresh air or he was going to take his Ouija and go home.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We all unanimously agreed that Vinny was an uptight asshole. As for his taking his Ouija back, “Over my dead body,” said Clemencia in a deadpan, and then slept with it under her pillow for a night or two.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One day, a skeptic friend who had been observing us for days asked the Ouija for proof. He didn't want to put his finger on the planchette: too easy it would be, he claimed, to get caught up in the illusion. Instead he asked the four of us who were sitting in session to ask Emma the ghost what his middle name was. The planchette unwaveringly spelled it out. I was in the room, and I saw my friend’s mouth hang open. He muttered “That is correct. I’ve never told anyone.” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, Tracy, a girl who was a self-proclaimed Born-Again Christian, talked me into stealing the Ouija and sneaking it when Clemencia was sleeping. Clemencia, she pointed out, was a church girl with nothing but Christ in her mouth. Yet that afternoon, when we told her she was becoming obsessed with Emma, Clemencia had looked at me and said, “Fuck you. Both of you. Get out of my room.” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tracy dragged me down to the dorm’s basement, with a Bible in her coat pocket and the Ouija under her arm. Once we’d set up the board over the ping pong table, Tracy began to invoke Emma, the ghost who had most consistently haunted our Ouija board. At first the planchette moved hesitantly under my index finger. Then it began to pick up confidence.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Are you there, Emma?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Your name isn’t really Emma, is it?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You’re Satan, aren’t you?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Goodbye</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Do you know God, Emma?” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Q U A</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Do you fear God, Emma?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Q U A C K</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Quack?” I didn’t speak English all that well yet, and it seemed odd to me that Emma was impersonating a duck.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yes, you're a quack, the quacks of all quacks,” Tracy intoned. She read a passage from Revelation, fire and brimstone and lakes of sulfur spilling out of her mouth in dramatic Evangelical overtones.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t know whether Emma was a duck or a dead person, whether she meant that Tracy was a quack or that God didn’t exist. But I do know, sure as I know I’m typing this right now, that the planchette was spinning too fast for my finger to keep up. I lifted up my finger and after a second or two, Tracy did also. The planchette kept spinning all by itself.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It spun for about four or five more seconds, so fast that it looked to my naked eyes like it had lifted half a finger’s height off of the Ouija board. Then it shot very fast and hard like a hockey puck at Tracy’s face. Tracy ducked. The planchette landed somewhere in the darkness of the dormitory’s basement. We heard its thuck thuck thuck and then it was quiet.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tracy congratulated herself on a job well done of exorcising the demon in the Ouija. As for myself, I don’t know what it was that spoke in Greek and could move a planchette without a physical body. But one thing is for sure: I never played Ouija again.</span></div>
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Laura Valeri is the author of two award-winning short story collections, Safe in Your Head (SFA Press) and The Kind of Things Saints Do (U of Iowa Press). You can follow her blog at www.lauravaleri.com<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-72963595101366907132013-10-26T00:01:00.000-04:002013-10-26T00:01:00.988-04:00Day 5: Haunted Holland<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Note:
I begged Jennifer Graham, my awesome photographer friend, to let me borrow some
of her famed cemetery photos for this post. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">All photographs are copyrighted. Please do not use without permission.</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"> I've included Jennifer's contact
information at the bottom. I highly recommend liking her</span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WRCPhoto" target="_blank"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none;"> </span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;">White Rabbit Creative Facebook page</span></a><span style="line-height: 115%;">. </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7QXHQnz7WpQ/UmsKe6P3DTI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/3xswgN39prw/s1600/BonLillies3web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7QXHQnz7WpQ/UmsKe6P3DTI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/3xswgN39prw/s640/BonLillies3web.jpg" width="425" /></a></div>
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When my oldest child was a toddler, we lived for a year in
the Netherlands. Our neighbors joked that we inhabited the oddest house in all
of Holland. It was a brick row house that
was built in the 1920s and ran eight meters across the front, like its normal
row mates, but shrank to only one meter in the back—enough for a single door. When
the rental agent showed it to us, we immediately fell in love with the oddball
home and nicknamed it “The Wedge.” We signed the lease and drove out to IKEA to
furnish our beloved wedge with modern Swedish decor. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Soon, I became friends with our most interesting neighbor,
an astrological adviser. Given her profession, I assumed that she was
open-minded to the supernatural. I saw no reason not to ask her if she had noticed
any weird occurrences at The Wedge or if she had heard stories of it being
haunted. She looked at me, shocked, and said, “There are no haunted houses in
Netherlands.” No haunted houses in Netherlands? My foot! I’m from the South.
Everything is haunted (“got haints”). No amount of modern, minimalist furniture
can excise persistent ghosts from the past.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5HjBoQ_yUj4/UmsKMJvYMZI/AAAAAAAAAIA/CRVspxvhKQI/s1600/ClayBarbbwweb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5HjBoQ_yUj4/UmsKMJvYMZI/AAAAAAAAAIA/CRVspxvhKQI/s400/ClayBarbbwweb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Wedge didn't possess bad energy. In fact, it was a sunny,
cheery place. My toddler son would giggle, wave, and carry
on a delightful conversation in babble to an invisible person on the balcony. Often I would return to the states and, alone
at The Wedge, my husband would work late into the night. He told me stories of how he had locked the
balcony door, only to find it open again. Once he looked into the mirror and saw the
reflection of a man standing behind him. I guess my most interesting experience
was waking up in the night to see a tall, reed-like man standing in our
bedroom, wearing a dull 1940s suit, smoking a cigarette, and peering out the
window. He looked as if he had been drawn
in charcoal.</div>
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I have since learned that these grayish, sketch-like
apparitions are a particular classification of ghosts. I understand that they can have yellow eyes.
Luckily, I didn't get to see my night visitor’s glowing orbs. </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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These were just isolated incidents in our time in The Wedge.
I still remember the home with tenderness and warmth. Maybe it was so lovely
there that its former inhabitant didn't want to leave. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Question: Have you ever had a supernatural encounter while traveling? If so, please share your story.</b></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HUyiX8cs0X0/UmsKZCscVCI/AAAAAAAAAII/H4a4m4Kn4cE/s1600/RedAngelweb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HUyiX8cs0X0/UmsKZCscVCI/AAAAAAAAAII/H4a4m4Kn4cE/s640/RedAngelweb.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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You can see more of Jennifer Graham’s work at the <a href="http://www.whiterabbitcreative.com/" target="_blank">White Rabbit Creative photography website</a>, <a href="http://www.etsy.com/shop/WhiteRabbitCR" target="_blank">Etsy</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteRabbitCr" target="_blank">Twitter</a> or <o:p></o:p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WRCPhoto" target="_blank">Facebook</a>. </div>
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Susanna Ives is a mommy and romance writer living in
Atlanta. Her upcoming book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Little-Secrets-Susanna-Ives/dp/1402283571/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1382747143&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Wicked Little Secrets</a> will be available on December
3<sup>rd</sup>. You can learn more about
her books at <a href="http://www.susannaives.com/" target="_blank">www.susannaives.com</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SusannaIves" target="_blank">Twitter</a>,
and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/SusannaIvesWriter" target="_blank">Facebook</a>. </div>
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Tag! Laura, you're next!</div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-29805583340335555092013-10-25T10:30:00.000-04:002013-10-25T11:48:18.741-04:00Day 6: My Sister's Story by Maryanne Stahl<b id="docs-internal-guid-05725676-ed67-9030-10f7-5a21ae006602" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
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<a href="http://everythingghost.co.uk/images/haunted%20room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://everythingghost.co.uk/images/haunted%20room.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is my sister’s story.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My youngest sister lives on a hill where Indians once roamed, near the Long Island Sound. Incredibly resourceful and blessed with wonderful taste, she has transformed what was a rather ordinary ranch-style house into a lovely, unique home that is open and bright, filled with vintage treasures. In this house she has raised four sweet sons, three dogs, five or six or seven cats, four rabbits, several lizards, and some fish. From her gardens the scents of lavender and roses mingle with the sea breeze. A haven, one would think. And yet.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She didn’t notice anything when they first moved in. Life was busy and the signs were gradual. Her middle boys, twins, had trouble going to sleep at night. They heard whispers in their ears, they said. But what child liked going to bed when there were video games to be played and frogs in the yard to be caught? “I hear whispers” seemed no more alarming than “I need a glass of water.” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Go to sleep</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, my sister would say. Often, the boys would pile together into one bed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Shut the closet door,” they would plead when she bid them good-night, and she would do so. After all, she understood how creatures could seem to lurk in closets; at the least, shadows could be cast. But the boys told her it was more than that. Something bad was in there. Or someone. The whisperer came from there, they were sure of it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the closet was kept shut. And some nights, that was enough,</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the room was cold, the coldest in the house, no matter what window caulking was done or heat adjustments were made. The twins’ room was icy. So the boys would hunker down under the blankets, covering their ears, whispering to each other to keep from hearing other, creepier sounds.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so time passed and the twins grew. They did their best to ignore the whispers by playing music or the television. They slept in their own beds now, but still piled on the blankets. Sometimes, the room was quiet for weeks. They got to high school, grew tall, played sports. They had a dog who would guard the house, barking when anyone came up the path, fearless, apparently, except where their room was concerned. She refused to enter it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One night when the boys were about eighteen, one of them was away, so the other slept alone in the room. He didn’t hear anything as he began to drift off, but before long he sensed something: someone else was there in the room with him. He felt someone near. Had his brother returned? He opened his eyes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the foot of his bed, bending, looming over him, was a huge, dark figure—with burning red eyes. The kid screamed , leapt from his bed and ran to his parents’ room, where he spent the rest of the night, half ashamed, at age 18, to have acted in a way that was not at all usual for him, half still frightened out of his wits.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shortly after that everyone started hearing the whispering. It moved between the twins’ room and just outside their door, in the hall. It said my sister’s name one night, as clear as if she’d said it aloud herself, and she was not the only one who heard it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For years my sister had tried not to upset the presence, whatever it was, but enough was enough. It had been terrorizing her sons for too long and her youngest son was afraid it would one day haunt his room too. One day when no one else was home, my sister entered the twins’ room and spoke to whomever or whatever was scaring her family. She asked it to stop. She insisted. It was time for it to go. And then she lit a bundle of sage the size of her arm and spent an hour cleansing the room from bed corner to closet corner.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That was about a year ago and the presence has not made itself known since. Of course, both boys are out of the house now—one at college, one in the navy. If the same entity is still around, it is manifesting itself differently. But that is a story for another day.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">------------</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maryanne Stahl is the author of the novels </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forgive the Moon</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Opposite Shore</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and the chapbook </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Electric Urgency</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tag, Susan is next. Boo!</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-67590697564787287742013-10-24T08:19:00.000-04:002013-10-24T08:45:33.586-04:00Day 7: The Postmaster by Ann Hogsett<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht8dPteUyC7FvnjYDeYZMicQpu3lOrljoUW_DizzOY4JVnkPspwWr8AhPRzVLmK9z_ZlaLWSsFAugF7PeFKf6SXBAibb4a7zcHw1U1HjIFKrfndHOMFatcldRUogyPU44ujy7kM8L1_JY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-10-22+at+11.44.19+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht8dPteUyC7FvnjYDeYZMicQpu3lOrljoUW_DizzOY4JVnkPspwWr8AhPRzVLmK9z_ZlaLWSsFAugF7PeFKf6SXBAibb4a7zcHw1U1HjIFKrfndHOMFatcldRUogyPU44ujy7kM8L1_JY/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-10-22+at+11.44.19+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Of all the more colorful ghosts in my small West Virginia hometown—the
woman who shot her mother, the man who killed one, or was it both, of his
parents with an axe—my phantom, the one who came calling that night in Apple
Alley, was merely the Postmaster. Unremarkable in life. Doggedly persistent in
death. Vengeful to the depths of his sorry soul.</div>
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We should never assume that the unpretentious apparition is
not the one to be reckoned with. A ghost is a ghost is a ghost.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The Postmaster lived with Mrs. Postmaster, who was also The Postmistress,
in a pretty cottage on the main street of town. Whatever else might have gone awry
in his life, the house must have been his refuge, his satisfaction, his place
of pride. At some point he told someone—someone who remembered and entered it
into the saga of the town—that he was NEVER going to leave that house.</div>
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Then he died. There was a funeral. There was a burial. After
that, he headed on home. His wife was still there for company but then she
died, too. And when they drove her over to the IOOF cemetery, she stayed where
she was planted. The Postmaster had the house all to himself.</div>
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For awhile.</div>
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Then an enterprising young couple with two lovely children
and a cat named Olive Jones converted it into a bed and breakfast. Now there
were guests. Things got crowded. And that’s when we showed up—for a class reunion
weekend—in the room at the top of the stairs under the peak of the single
gable, in the old bed that “came with the house” courtesy of the man who still
preferred to sleep there. Alone.</div>
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They told us about their ghost. I knew him by name, of
course. Remembered his face and his wife’s, both of them staid and efficient,
managing our mail. The young innkeepers were quite merry about how he was still
around. He was good for business now. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">frisson</span></i> of dread
was entertaining at breakfast.</div>
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3 o’clock in the morning? No.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I remember moonlight filtered through lace. The silence
everywhere. City people forget how still the night world can be in a lightly
inhabited town. Still, still, still. Except, of course, for the sound of
footsteps on the stair. Slow. Heavy. Closer and closer, as I rifled my mind for
a reasonable explanation. Here’s what I came up with: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Postmaster is now standing right outside the bedroom door.</i> </div>
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<br /></div>
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I slipped out of bed, shivering in the sultry August dark. I
stopped at the door. Now what? We were facing each other with two inches of old
oak between us. I put my palm on the wood. He laid his on the other side. Palm
to palm, me and The Postmaster’s ghost. I know this because my sweaty hand
bonded to the door as flesh always does when it touches frozen iron. And I know
because our minds froze together, too, and he showed me exactly what it was
like to be dead.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It was not what I expected.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ghosts are realer than
you. Truer than a Monday. More forever than a Sunday afternoon.</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And here.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> We are right
here.</i><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
(Tag, Maryanne Stahl, you're next!)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">* * *</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ann Hogsett is a mom, wife, and novelist who lives ten yards -- ten! -- from the shores of Lake Erie, which she describes as "</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">beautiful, compelling, threatening, raging by turns. Always impossible to ignore." You can share her adventures at her blog: <a href="http://lakeewriter.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Lake E</a>. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-32353592066739198132013-10-23T07:54:00.000-04:002017-10-23T12:09:49.466-04:00Day 8: Huggin' Molly by Tina Whittle<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9hPa22cKaPtaYxDQYKJUX13IEdRXWDDl4YaAFh3X-Q17Nu2PpE30w5JYKkONmDY7ORltjoMIC7vac1ZX94XpYfX1Klu9K1Q0QXBWaS6terotJanBQsN6NjSg1Q_DhPd2Px-c8J7NZxVA/s1600/train+tunnel+by+adamr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9hPa22cKaPtaYxDQYKJUX13IEdRXWDDl4YaAFh3X-Q17Nu2PpE30w5JYKkONmDY7ORltjoMIC7vac1ZX94XpYfX1Klu9K1Q0QXBWaS6terotJanBQsN6NjSg1Q_DhPd2Px-c8J7NZxVA/s320/train+tunnel+by+adamr.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image courtesy of adamr / FreeDigitalPhotos.net</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Every community has
its local legend, and my small hometown in Middle Georgia is no exception. Cochran
has always been a sleepy little farming community, dotted with cotton fields
and catfish ponds. When I was growing up, the railroad cut through the swamp
behind my house. On summer nights I’d hear its keening wail and imagine it
was some mysterious animal.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I wasn’t the only
one to mythologize the midnight train. My friends and I made up stories about
it</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">— where was it going? where had it been? who
rode those rails through the humid night, anonymous behind the glass and steel?—and imagined a life beyond the red clay ditches. Perhaps this was the reason
for the legend that sprung up about the railroad tracks. Perhaps our parents
and grandparents sensed the lure of the outbound train, headed for exotic new
horizons. Perhaps it was they who first started the stories of Huggin’ Molly. Or
perhaps her story really is true, and having passed from mouth to mouth down
the railroad line, has become legend.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">Cochran isn't the only Southern town who knows of her</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">—there's a town in Alabama that has a Huggin' Molly cafe, and though they claim the legend is unique to that area, it's not. Their Molly is more benevolent than Georgia's version. A hug from their Molly is disturbing, but not deadly, as people who claim to have experienced her embrace will tell you. Cold and unpleasant, they say. Chilled them right to the bone, they say.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">Our Molly, however...nobody ever made it out of our Molly's arms to tell the tale.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">All I know is
this: on moonless nights, when the train would come through, if you stood close
to the tracks you could hear her crying for her lost lover. Her sobbing would
mix with the train whistle. And then you’d better hide. You’d better move as
far away from those tracks as you could get. Because even though Huggin’ Molly
looked like any other woman, she always wore mourning clothes topped with a
long black veil—and a sailor hat. And she had arms so long that she would
snatch you right up off the side of the road, snatch you into her relentless embrace,
snatch you onto the midnight train. And your scream would mingle with the
banshee whistle and you’d be taken away down the tracks, never to be seen
again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">I never saw
Huggin’ Molly. But I cannot hear a train whistle without feeling a shiver race
down my spine. Without taking a step backwards. Without imagining those long,
long arms.</span><i> </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(This post first published at <a href="http://littlemisstrainwreck.com/" target="_blank">Little Miss Train Wreck</a>, a blog of fashion, book reviews, and author interviews)</span></i></span><br />
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<b><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">TAG, Ann Hogsett! You're up next! </span></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">* * * * * *</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjTlB-b3LUFW3r8bZGAF_cFMUm_b4KwOwcQVxeBrLmJM_hweS8BUYjve-TuRyK4j8MvZzSUdDSXO_nA7VU6Z74aLruA3kJpEOul2CAxxk5U7wcpFp0NCtT1uDb839SogHPUqym2lPeNdE/s1600/me+at+Sugar+Magnolia+signing+2+EDIT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjTlB-b3LUFW3r8bZGAF_cFMUm_b4KwOwcQVxeBrLmJM_hweS8BUYjve-TuRyK4j8MvZzSUdDSXO_nA7VU6Z74aLruA3kJpEOul2CAxxk5U7wcpFp0NCtT1uDb839SogHPUqym2lPeNdE/s200/me+at+Sugar+Magnolia+signing+2+EDIT.jpg" width="159" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tina Whittle is a mystery writer living and working in the Georgia Lowcountry. Her current novel, <i><a data-mce-href="http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/blood-ash-and-bone/" href="http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/blood-ash-and-bone/" target="_blank">Blood, Ash, and Bone </a></i>— the third in the Tai Randolph/Trey Seaver series — is available now.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Visit <a data-mce-href="http://www.tinawhittle.com" href="http://www.tinawhittle.com/" target="_blank">www.tinawhittle.com</a> to learn more.</span><br />
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Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-90785888458694755602013-10-22T19:40:00.001-04:002013-10-25T17:00:24.525-04:00Day 9: The Living House<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/328/1/d/a_haunted_house_by_burzinski-d33ht4s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/328/1/d/a_haunted_house_by_burzinski-d33ht4s.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
As promised, here with are, in full Halloween paraphernalia, (well, I've got chocolate) starting our Nine Days to Halloween True Story Blog Series.<br />
<br />
Unlike my Mojito sisters who all have a hard time coming up with more than one true ghost stories, I've got a pumpkin's head full of them right here.<br />
<br />
That's because I lived in a very, very creepy house, in a very, very creepy neighborhood. This is coming from a chick who is living right now in the #1 haunted city of all the United States, Savannah, GA.<br />
<br />
No, this house I'm talking about wasn't in Savannah: I think it would have been too creepy for all these good meaning pirates, black cats, and fair maidens dwelling in these lovely Victorian homes. This house was the thug of haunted places: think Amityville. Think The Omen. The kind of house that plays with your head, making you think at first you're a little tired, maybe, that maybe you really did leave the back door open four times in the span of one hour, and no it didn't really shut in your face when you went to lock it again for the fifth: surely it was the wind! It was the kind of house that wants to terrify you slowly with sudden drops in temperatures, and a strange kind of energy that makes you feel like you're being watched and not in a good way; a house with creaky ceilings, missing items, and electricity gone haywire, voices of weeping women floating in as if from a radio hidden somewhere, playing at very low volume. The kind of house that wants to kill you like a frog in a boiling pot.<br />
<br />
When we first moved into this house I was a tween. My family had just spent a year living in a condo in bustling uptown New York, but my father was seduced by the idea of realizing the American dream: a house in a quiet neighborhood with plenty of room for the kids to grow and play and sprawl, with so much land in the backyard and even a basketball hoop in the front.<br />
<br />
We should have been tipped off to the weirdness by the address: 39-1/2. We laughed about it. Ha ha, these crazy Americans. It became less funny when we realized that the guy who owned the original lot, the guy who now lived in #39 was a widower, a married widower, married, that is, for the seventh time. Wife #7 was dying of cancer, by the way. <br />
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On the other side of the fence, in house #40, our neighbor was a very nice family: three kids, a man and his wife. Except his wife died only after a few months after we moved in. She drowned in her own swimming pool. Not funny: the father, owner of #40, married again not six months later, and his brand new wife was, you guessed it, very, very pregnant. A year later, however: so sorry. Father also dies. Drowned.<br />
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As for our house: all we knew about the previous owner was that he was an "Arab" (real estate lady's words). His son, it came out once, long after my dad had signed the mortgage, had tried to axe "the Arab" to death. We could, in fact, still trace the axe mark in the room across the hall from mine, a room we called the yellow room because when we first bought the house, every room was painted a bright pastel color. Whether there had been any casualties, we could only guess.<br />
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What we didn't have to guess was that something was wrong with the neighborhood altogether. Not only were our friends to the left and to the right of us contaminated with serial death. We were, like our Amityville friends across the bay, built on Indian burial ground. I hated walking home from school after dark: it was like I could feel the darkness watching me and hating me. <br />
<br />
The worst part was "the howl": it happened exactly at 4:30. It sounded something between a tortured dog and an agonized human, more like a dog than a human. The howl was so chilling, so painful or angry or...something that it literally chilled the bones to hear it. It went on for about 30 seconds, long enough for any one unlucky enough to hear it to make us drop our jaw and try to understand :WHAT THE HELL IS THAT, HUH? WHAT IS IT? WHAT THE HELL IS IT? Then it was gone. And it always sounded like it was coming from everywhere. From the north, from the south, no, no, from there, from there back in the woods! Who knew.<br />
<br />
When we asked our neighbors they said they hadn't heard it. Then they heard it and they said it was the woman who was sick of cancer who lived in the house in front of us, from where, I was sure, the howl had not issued. And why was it always coming at 4:30?<br />
<br />
I told my friend at school about it and she thought the story interesting enough to nod. Then one afternoon she came home with me and we played hoops, and I was beating her ass, but she got the basketball and 4:30 ticked in and the howl came. My friend dropped the ball and began to shake.<br />
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"I told you!" I said to her. By now I was used to it. <br />
<br />
"I have to go home now," she said. And she never came to my house again.<br />
<br />
As for the house: at night I heard the unmistakable sounds of someone in high heels walking the length of the bedroom a floor above mine. She'd go to the end of the room, stop, and then walk the length back. Only problem: there was no floor above mine, only a lot of insulating material, not the kind of place anyone could walk on, let alone in high heels.<br />
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The house also had fun playing with electricity: the garage door opened and closed at will. The lights would turn on and off in different bedrooms, sporadically. The drier was in the habit of starting a cycle all of its own will.<br />
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My father, a skeptic to the end, called an electrician to inspect the house. "Nothing wrong," said the electrician. We complained about the garage door opening and closing at all hours of the night. "It's another garage door opener that's somehow got its signal mixed up," said the pragmatic man.<br />
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"But what about the alarm?" my dad inquired.<br />
<br />
The alarm had gone off throughout the whole house a few night before the electrician came, setting the whole house a-ringing, tearing us out of bed in the wee hours of the night. It shut itself off after we had all scurried out of our rooms and met with wide, glassy eyes in the hallway, looking to one another for the next thing to do. <br />
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"What alarm?" said the electrician like we were trying to trick him.<br />
<br />
"The alarm" my dad pointed impatiently to the windows, where he imagined it would have been installed.<br />
<br />
"Sir," said the electrician backing away from my dad, "I've checked your entire system, outside and inside. There is no alarm set up in this house."<br />
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Once, after school, as usual we called my mother to pick us up. She said, "I'm on my way," and hung up. An hour later, she still wasn't there. We decided we could start walking towards home, like we often did, and meet her on the way. But we went all the way home and Mom hadn't left the house. When we got inside, we found her stomping around, crying, holding her hair and cursing under her breath.<br />
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"My car keys," she cried, as soon as we stepped in. "Did you do a joke on me?" I dropped them right there, right there!" she pointed at her bed. We (my brother, my sister and myself) all searched the bed, we retraced the steps to the kitchen as we tried to calm her down, to the bathroom, back to the bedroom. Not trusting my own eyes, I began to feel the whole length of the bed from left to right, then again from right to left. I removed all the pillows and searched again. No keys.<br />
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I went to look for my sister, who was in her bedroom, looking at a creepy doll she kept on the pillows of her bed and, not seeing me there, she asked the doll in all earnestness: "Was it you? Did you eat the keys?"<br />
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I left my sister's bedroom and turned back to my mother's bedroom, and there, like a bad joke, the keys of the car sat on the bed, just as my mother said. I pointed, I said "There!" My mother looked, her breath failing her. "I swear," she muttered, "I swear I looked."<br />
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She looked that same way another time, too, also in the middle of the night, on a night when my dad was traveling. She woke us up with a terrified scream that went on and on and on and on.<br />
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We ran to her bedroom and found her in bed, all the lights in her room on.<br />
<br />
"What happened?"<br />
<br />
She was holding her head, looking agape at all the different lamps, her bed lamps, her three way light standing lamp across the room.<br />
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"The lights turned on all at once!" she finally gasped. "All at once. All of them."<br />
<br />
They were each on different switches and different systems.<br />
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You will hear a lot about this house, especially on Halloween, when I tell you the motherload of all the Ghost Stories of 39-1/2. But for now, this will do.<br />
<br />
Tag, you're it, Tina Whittle.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;">Laura Valeri is the author of </span><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/9781622880119" style="background-color: white; color: #5f7241; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; text-decoration: none;">Safe in Your Head</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;"> (Stephen F. Austin University Press) and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Things-Saints-Short-Fiction-ebook/dp/B00D3FJMHG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=" style="background-color: white; color: #5f7241; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; text-decoration: none;">The Kind of Things Saints Do</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;"> (U of Iowa Press) both award winners. Visit Laura Valeri's blog at www.lauravaleri.com</span><br />
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<br />Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-27113371753815210012013-10-21T17:04:00.001-04:002013-10-21T17:10:48.407-04:00True Ghost Stories: The MLS Halloween Blog Tag<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You've heard of the twelve days of Christmas, the song with the pear trees, the calendar with the chocolate treats, and blah, blah, blah.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjglSKTAA0qGZ0hrD6T-wOdkf9GJ70mBaRVEF_b-C8_fKbX6Ctg2dxw5FVCafOel-hE1kGhhcp2szmz_NTIAjOgkL3cYFppimQc5B3jwBDy0Z4HN6CZ2cbNjdDcHOTfIMew46653CI2Hq5b/s1600/scary_bat_hovering_500_clr_485.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjglSKTAA0qGZ0hrD6T-wOdkf9GJ70mBaRVEF_b-C8_fKbX6Ctg2dxw5FVCafOel-hE1kGhhcp2szmz_NTIAjOgkL3cYFppimQc5B3jwBDy0Z4HN6CZ2cbNjdDcHOTfIMew46653CI2Hq5b/s320/scary_bat_hovering_500_clr_485.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
Well, it's almost Halloween, and we at the Mojito Literary Society believe that fine traditions start with wise women...us! <br />
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We believe that as a citizen of the world, you have a right to be frightened to death, and so, we say, in the spirit of Halloween, the MLS is read to provide to you an opportunity to make you so chilled that you'll want to reach for the nearest mojito, with cranberries and caramel apples at that! (Any recipes, mojito sisters?)<br />
<br />
The Mojito Literary Society hereby presents:<br />
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<br />
THE NINE DAYS TO HALLOWEEN TRUE GHOST STORY BLOG TAG,<br />
<br />
wherein<br />
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each of us mojito sisters will tell you a story about ghosts and weird phenomena, guaranteed true, 100%, either because one of us was there and experienced it or because it came from the lips of someone we personally know and trust not to bullshit us and try to impress us.<br />
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So expect this:<br />
<br />
1 True Ghost Story<br />
4 all of 9 days<br />
each story followed by a "TAG YOU'RE IT" to another Mojito Sister<br />
<br />
In other words, <br />
<br />
WE'RE FIXIN' TO SCARE ALLS Y'ALLS<br />
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(That one came from the Savannah Chapter Mojito Sister)<br />
<br />
because we at the MLS want to wish<br />
<br />
ALL YOUR HALLOWEEN NIGHTMARES COME TRUE<br />
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So grab a blanket, a broom, salt, a crucifix, and get ready to read some true stories about those rent-skipping inhabitants of yours' all's abodes: DA GHOSts of Halloween.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowabkI80d38sJLJAsYrP80R40J5eqwWcIcdcqsp2hyphenhyphenKqfWJRisDyKq5Xk9I1eIye2RyME69yltOYjbXOpn5xtZVMoplQ0RLxfNkrGl1sPOMrXc4ZBK9eoVnl85b1wofFJlnpylkt-tc68/s1600/ghost_creepy_walk_300_clr_9866.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowabkI80d38sJLJAsYrP80R40J5eqwWcIcdcqsp2hyphenhyphenKqfWJRisDyKq5Xk9I1eIye2RyME69yltOYjbXOpn5xtZVMoplQ0RLxfNkrGl1sPOMrXc4ZBK9eoVnl85b1wofFJlnpylkt-tc68/s1600/ghost_creepy_walk_300_clr_9866.gif" /></a></div>
Starting tomorrow, October 22, 2013Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-63450100326984636442013-07-09T17:32:00.001-04:002013-07-09T17:32:49.549-04:00Love in The Age of Immortality: A review of Will McIntosh's Love Minuse Eighty<div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
<img alt="" class="alignleft" data-mce-src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1369083657l/16100436.jpg" height="329" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1369083657l/16100436.jpg" style="border: 0px; cursor: default; display: inline; float: left; margin: 4px 24px 12px 0px;" width="223" />Will McIntosh was a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University until recently, when he won a Hugo Award for his novella titled "Bridesicle" (<em style="border: none; color: inherit;">Asimov's</em> 2009). Then he turned his sights to his lifelong passion, writing, and we are all benefitting for it now with the many books that McIntosh has already written.</div>
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"Bridesicle" was a story about dating in a futuristic age where it is possible to revive dead people -- for a lot of money. It is disturbing and touching and, like much of MacIntosh's work, it raises question about our social dynamics and how they might complicate our already complicated personal connections in a not so distant future.</div>
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<dt class="wp-caption-dt" style="color: black; font-weight: bold;"><img alt="" class=" " data-mce-src="http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Will-McIntosh.jpg" height="358" src="http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Will-McIntosh.jpg" style="-webkit-user-drag: none; border: 0px none; cursor: default; margin: 5px; padding: 0px;" width="238" /></dt>
<dd class="wp-caption-dd" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px;">Will McIntosh</dd></dl>
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McIntosh now churns out books like there is no tomorrow, and so far all of them have been gripping -- and I'm not saying this just because I know him. It was a humbling experience getting to read McIntosh's work, since I was the tenured fiction professor at Georgia Southern, and he was the aspiring writer who, from time to time, sought me out for advice. There was a lot of ego swallowing involved. Writers aren't the most generous critics when it comes to their contemporaries, but McIntosh's imagination is so lively and so prophetic, and his stories so full of heart, that it's hard to resist putting down his books. Moreover, his style of writing is always breezy and efficient: you get just what you need, without fluff or ornaments. He's one of the few writers who are simply just born with the ability to tell a story and to get out of its way.</div>
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<em style="border: none; color: inherit;">Love Minus Eighty</em> is yet another complete success. Based on "Bridesicle," the award winning novella, <em style="border: none; color: inherit;">Love Minus Eighty</em> is a lively story about how looking for love continues to be as messed up, dysfunctional, problematic, and irresistible as it has always been, even in an age when people play with interactive holographic romance games, and, yes, can even take the dating scene to the morgue.</div>
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In spite of all the futuristic glamor, the novel really is grounded deeply in the way that people are. The need to find a soul mate, even when, or especially when, the world is collapsing seems to be one of McIntosh's trademark themes. We get to experience what that need would look like if our technology advanced just enough for humanity to cheat death -- at least for a little while.</div>
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In McIntosh's near future world, "freezing insurance" is on almost everyone's benefits package, and it will pay to freeze cadavers taken to a facility storage with the possibility of being revived at some point in the future -- but the revival itself is so costly that only the most obscenely rich can afford it. As in previous stories, McIntosh drives home the problematic rift between social classes, and touches on other very contemporary themes: the voyeuristic culture encouraged by social media; the certain loss of personal privacy; and the dark side of science and technology advancements which, along with miracles, also bring about more opportunities for exploitation, disconnectedness and dehumanization.</div>
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But the dominant theme is a classic one: our very human inability to confront and accept our own mortality. The super rich will languish in protracted agony just to steal another breath, while those who rely on other's money are willing to sell their hearts and souls just to be revived for only a few minutes.</div>
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This basic human fear, the chilling terror of the unknown, is the driving force behind the plot, and it causes characters to act in sometimes abominable, and sometimes saintly ways. Some of these characters are already trapped in a stasis between life and death, stored in a Cryogenic facility that revives them only for an exclusive, high-browed clientele of unimaginably rich people who can afford to throw millions away for a "bridesicle," a trophy wife who may yet be revived for a last chance at life. Only the beautiful and the young get to enjoy this special "privilege" but only some actually make it out of the creche and then at the expense of their happiness and freedom.</div>
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The premise may seem dreary, but most of the novel is humorous and light hearted, probably because most of the characters that we follow are so perfectly lovable. My favorite is Veronika: a neurotic, too-smart-for-her-own-good, sassy dating coach who, in spite of having an unparalleled talent for setting up her clients with the loves of their lives, is completely incapable of getting over her crush with Mr. Wrong. Then there is Lycan, a neuroscientist genius with zero social skills who won't even be allowed the dignity of committing suicide without his employer's interference. And Lorelei, an attention-junky who will go to any lengths to attract more viewers, even breaking up with people she loves.</div>
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In the end, this is a story about love, about friendship and about the things most of us would be willing to put ourselves through if we had a chance to take back or make up for our worst mistake.</div>
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As with other McIntosh novels, this is a breezy, fast read, the kind of book that you look forward to sneaking away with on your lunch break. And yet the novel leaves you with so much more than just the pleasure of an imaginative and fast-paced story. McIntosh is such an astute observer of human character that you'll feel like he was lurking in your closet, spying on you and on all your best friends when he created these lively and so true-to life characters. Scary. But all in a good way.</div>
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And now this novel has been picked up by Warner for a possible movie adaptation. I can see why: the setting of a futuristic bi-leveled Manhattan connected by a high-speed elevator between the rich people's High Town and the blue-collar Low Town surrounded by the wilderness of abandoned suburbs inhabited by the Raw Lifers, all promise visual candy of the most sophisticated kind.</div>
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And just to tantalize you a bit more, here is the trailer for the book, one of the best I've seen yet. Enjoy.</div>
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cRzEB5d1xhc]</div>
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<div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Laura Valeri is the author of <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/9781622880119">Safe in Your Head</a> (Stephen F. Austin University Press) and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Things-Saints-Short-Fiction-ebook/dp/B00D3FJMHG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=">The Kind of Things Saints Do</a> (U of Iowa Press) both award winners. Visit Laura Valeri's blog at www.lauravaleri.com</div>
Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-46276867177228594452013-05-28T13:31:00.004-04:002013-05-28T21:11:00.730-04:00Tina's Review of Maleficae by Emma Bolden<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s a title that reeks of infamy </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">— the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Malleus Maleficarum</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">, Hammer of the Witches, </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">a</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> fifteenth-century guide to the persecution
of witches written under the cloak of religious piety. I cannot hear or see
those Latin words without recalling my knowledge of the historical Burning Times,
without tasting ashes in my mouth. Unfortunately, the persecution still exists </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">— t</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">here are
still fires aplenty in this world for those deemed different, subversive,
dangerous, and demonic. Now, as then, most of the victims are still women.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<a href="http://www.genpopbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bolden-maleficae-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.genpopbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bolden-maleficae-cover.jpg" width="243" /></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I knew these things when I first learned
about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maleficae</i>, Emma Bolden’s
collection of poems relating this inhumanity by telling the story of one witch.
I knew there would be torture, flames and death, and I wasn’t sure I could bear
to open such a book. However, I am grateful that I did, grateful that my first
introduction to the poems came on a stage here in South Georgia, when I heard
Bolden read from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maleficae</i>. These intensely
personal, painfully lyrical poems shattered the distance between me and the
anonymous witch whose voice is heard throughout. They sing and sting, indict
and provoke. They are woven with the threads of life and death and rebirth,
power in all its manifestations, survival in the face of extinction. Together,
they create a human story made intimate through the voices and visions
contained within, especially the narrative of the witch herself. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The words are evocative and often beautiful,
t</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">he imagery visceral, precise, wrenching,
vivid. Bolden’s carefully spaced words and phrases feel organic. They deliver
so much gratification on first read that one can’t help returning to the lines
again and again. It’s only on that second or third pass that the deeper
meanings bloom, as in this, the beginning of </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“The Witch Remembers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her Early
Learnings</i>”:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">When I learned<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to speak<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">to speak in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rushes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>entwining</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">their arms<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to wind<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>down the river<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which always
wanted</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">to escape its stays</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">Bolden respects the powers of visualization. She provides the necessary
sensory details, the one-two-punches of metaphor and description, and the
reader constructs the whole of the scene — the low-lit barn, the lovers in bed,
the circle cast in the oaks. Or here, from</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">
“The Witch Remembers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her Body as Holding</i>,”
</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">the transformational agony of childbirth:</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 2.0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I became</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">animal<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pressure<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pain<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>howl</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">of wolf packs<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>women split</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">by the same<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shriek<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>the same muscles</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">snapped<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we are all<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>unmade<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>by making</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">Though the rhythm
feels easy, these are finely wrought, carefully honed pieces. Their seamlessness
is seductive, and treacherous. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I
followed their heartbeat</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> cadences,</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;"> they led me</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">
straight into the noose. Watch what Bolden does in this stanza, from “The
Liturgy of the Word”:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">she who with hair
sun-slick even in moonfall<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a woman</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">of ribbons<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>who glistens<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sent by God</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">and His Good Grace<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to punish<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to warn the other good</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">women of what good<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>can do</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The repetition of
the word “good” at first feels beneficent, coming as it does after the
description of the glory of a beautiful, nature-graced woman, a woman of God. Then
that sharp infinitive </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">— “to punish” —
and the trap is set and sprung.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The witch of these poems is an
herbalist and midwife, healer and medicine worker. In her everyday labors, she
makes the hard choices for the village, and they let her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her hands bring both life and death,
sometimes intertwined so tightly that they cannot be separated. In one poem, the
villagers express how they see her, what they think she can bring them —
“tables stacked high with fattened fowl and flock” — <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but on a deeper level, the most important
thing she delivers is a sense of control to their lives, which are often harsh
and filled with arbitrary tragedy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This power she possesses is
dangerous, but in the eyes of her eventual accusers, the first and most damning
of the evidence against her is her gender. Women were considered the inferior
sex, and as such, more susceptible to Satan’s wiles. In the textual notes, Bolden
quotes from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Malleus Maleficarum</i>:</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> “And it should be noted that there was a defect in
the formation of the 1st woman, since she was formed from a bent rib . . . . And
since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bolden echoes this belief in several
of the poems, with lines such as “An unwatched woman is a waiting calamity,”
and “Adam’s rib bent eternal/struck straight only by a man’s guidance.” Most
powerful to me is this stanza, at the end of “The Witch’s Apprenticeship,” a
poem detailing the witch’s delivery of an out-of-wedlock baby, an event that
ends with the death of the mother:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">this is the hemorrhage<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that can’t</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">be contained<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this is the
woman<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>now a body</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">unholy<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by priest forbidden<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from churchyard<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this is the salt</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">you’ll let fall<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in blessing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>her new-mounded grave</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">The poems are rich with the tangible details of this
nameless witch’s ancient craft— the herbs with their powers both mundane and
magical, the charms and candles, the spells and petitions — and with the spiritual vocabulary that the witch uses to describe her God. She uses the word in its
masculine sense, but her God is very different from the God of the Christian
priests. In the poem, “The Witch’s Testimony <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hour Seventy-Two: In Which the Witch Describeth Her God</i>,” she gives
voice to her understanding of the Divine in a fevered spill of torture-induced
words that are nonetheless an evocation of the Sacred Masculine:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">the wolf ’s hair
standing guard against rain the rain</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">that slides from
the wolf ’s slate coat the forest marten furred</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">in darkness the
darkness itself and the light lying within its</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">sealed lips</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">In response to the accusations against her, the witch says, “yes I
understand the severity of charges, I understand of all things severity.” My
heart cracked at those words. I had heard this woman’s stories, glimpsed her
life. Th</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">e connection between us had been
forged, an impossible connection that was nonetheless true and real.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even though I am quoting from these
poems, I am leaving some of the more breathtaking phrases between the pages of the
book, to be discovered there. The experience of seeing the poems on the page
invites new meaning with each reading </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">— the spaces and pauses open up new interpretations, sometimes twisting
the reader around mid-line. W</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">e know how
this story will end, </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">for we know our
history; we know the hundreds of thousands of endings recorded throughout
Western Europe for centuries. Despite our knowing, the poems still startle. Consider,
for example, “The Witch’s Daughter Still Lives,” narrated by the witch’s young
child, a witness to her mother’s execution, which becomes in her eyes an
alchemical transformation:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">that morning</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">with my new mother</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I said the fire</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">was an angel<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">it was the story of burning</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">straw into gold and the sparks</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">were spirits<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said someone</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">was making gold</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">One thing I
especially appreciate about this collection is that Bolden included explanatory
textual notes, as well as a listing of her resources (which included everything
from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Malleus Maleficarium</i> itself to
Stephen Wilson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Magical Universe:
Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe</i>). While I recognized many of
the herbal and magical items, there were many references unfamiliar to me,
especially in this historical context. I learned a great deal, but because
Bolden saved these explanations for the end instead of using footnotes, the
poems themselves weren’t interrupted by pieces of documentation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bolden ends the collection with a
simple dedication: “Finally, for the witches<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">—</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua
luceat eis</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">.” From Mozart’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Requiem</i>, the words can be translated as,
“Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them.”
Bolden’s poems illuminate too. They cast light on a terrible subject, creating
new shapes, new shadows. While the darkness she conjures may be deep and painful,
readers should not fear these poems, heartbreaking
and soul-rending though they may be. Come to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maleficae</i> as you would to the point of the sword, with perfect love
and perfect trust in your heart. You will be rewarded.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">* * * </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">You can get a copy of <i>Maleficae </i>straight from the publisher <a href="http://www.genpopbooks.com/emma-bolden/maleficae/" target="_blank">GenPop Books</a> or find it on Amazon.com or -- and you should do this if you possibly can -- from Emma Bolden herself. Learn more about Emma at her website: <a href="http://emmabolden.com/" target="_blank">http://emmabolden.com/</a></span></div>
Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-23397837713146480752013-02-04T17:27:00.002-05:002013-02-04T17:52:51.825-05:00Tenth of December: George Saunders' Vision of the Future<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://media.salon.com/2013/01/tenth_december.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://media.salon.com/2013/01/tenth_december.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
If you haven't yet picked up this book, do it. If you're a writer and you haven't yet picked up this book, really do it. If you're a writer who reads and writes fiction and you haven't yet picked up this book: you'll be missing out if you don't read this book.<br />
<br />
Some of the stories in Tenth of December remind me a little bit of of Kurt Vonnegut, pointing towards the absurd dilemmas of a technologically driven society. In "Escape From Spiderhead" a convict is a lab rat for a commercial pharmaceutical company that tests emotion enhancement drugs. "In The Sempica Girls Diary" a middle class father trying to make his children happy buys into a dehumanizing practice that victimizes illegal immigrants. And in "My Chivalrous Fiasco" an employee of a Medieval themed entertainment facility is bribed to silence by way of a mind-enhancing "upgrade" to a Pacing Guard position in the live and interactive Medieval tech show.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://herbachisamess.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/saunders2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://herbachisamess.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/saunders2.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>
Saunders' terrifying scenarios are populated by glib, self-justifying morons but the stories crackle with wit. In "My Chivalric Fiasco" the medical enhancement KnightLyfe is designed to gift its patient with verbal abilities presumedly realistic to medieval speech: "What ho! Had charged. Up crude ladders, with manly Imprecations." (I still laugh when I read that one). When the recently returned veteran in "Home" returns to his own haunts he walks into a store, but isn't sure if it is a store because he can't tell what they're selling. The MiiVOXmax that he picks up looks like a tag rather than a product. When he asks what the product is, the retail clerk responds, "It's more like what it is for, is how I'd say it." Naturally the veteran asks what it is for, the clerk replies "this is probably more the one for you," and offers him an identical item called a MiiVOXmin, and its purpose is equally obscure. <br />
<br />
There wasn't a single story in this collection that I didn't simply devour. In spite of the frustrating and often tragic events, the characters are each so well-intentioned, so hopeful and so full of heart that it's hard to come out of reading even the most pessimistic of these stories without coming out at the end of it with a sense of optimism for the future and elation for the general good heartedness of people. In "Tenth of December," the collection's title story, a cancer patient resolves on committing suicide, but ends up instead involved in a rescue situation. In "The Semplica Girls Diaries" the middel aged disgruntled father desiring status and money throws it all away without a blink to protect his children. In "Escape from Spiderhead" it's the life-sentence convict who is able to make the most moral and the most selfless act.<br />
<br />
These beautiful stories each glow with Saunder's imagination, his vision of a world ruled by an insensitive money-driven society tempered by the tender and altruistic instincts of its most ordinary citizens. Every story leaves us with the sense that human nature itself has been redeemed, its thoughtless ambition in the end always overwhelmed by the simple need to connect to our loved ones, and to do what's best for others, in spite of ourselves.Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-58908514557292225512013-01-27T20:48:00.002-05:002013-01-29T16:45:12.594-05:00Mojito Literary Society Writers Retreat WInter 2013<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ_RodQXDFi1zo08qoWluUr2p0Y7L4EEaf5wLcuzteDIQDYj_G2oI2QvFmoPymUzRT3qxNKx-ADFE73Mz2EZA_kze6Stt-485HC7IqYNHw-VTArUSUJo6vQKpO-JGUf1fluG25OoxHSUU/s1600/mls+%231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ_RodQXDFi1zo08qoWluUr2p0Y7L4EEaf5wLcuzteDIQDYj_G2oI2QvFmoPymUzRT3qxNKx-ADFE73Mz2EZA_kze6Stt-485HC7IqYNHw-VTArUSUJo6vQKpO-JGUf1fluG25OoxHSUU/s320/mls+%231.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wha<span style="font-size: large;">t are the ingredients of a top<span style="font-size: large;">-notch writers ret<span style="font-size: large;">reat, you ask? <span style="font-size: large;">First, start with three writers<span style="font-size: large;"> (more or less, to taste). We liked a mix of poet<span style="font-size: large;">, historical<span style="font-size: large;"> fiction writer, and mystery novelist.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG97M81F4lAZbp04GVmSD8mTr0J3SNpzXbeZer9mhH6Ua99HFu4gitX04qSeFo12_dcVvjTaQIasAWjmZcsdP_L20395r6a4Y9sXvjpeg7c-WJFs4kuHnVmedFYaZkGzejyppmjjorgk8/s1600/sun+in+woods.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG97M81F4lAZbp04GVmSD8mTr0J3SNpzXbeZer9mhH6Ua99HFu4gitX04qSeFo12_dcVvjTaQIasAWjmZcsdP_L20395r6a4Y9sXvjpeg7c-WJFs4kuHnVmedFYaZkGzejyppmjjorgk8/s320/sun+in+woods.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Place in secluded location <span style="font-size: large;">(a cabin <span style="font-size: large;">in the mount<span style="font-size: large;">ains is ideal, but beaches and some cit<span style="font-size: large;">ies could be substituted -- here is the view from our front porch at <span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.paradise-cabins.com/" target="_blank">Paradise Hills Resort and Spa</a> in Blairsville, GA</span>)</span></span></span></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKW4l-bA2ssjzwIBmoPdsYmm3e4BaftAPOSHnIcwy8f1tPpW8nslZ9DIYm_aPRgkRheBZFo_M74RQ_hb5YadD6Tbjh74q2XbbgjDJHHG9TSOGmGSLqbk1l0up6zh_3sgNAnRt-UZNXvzE/s1600/ice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKW4l-bA2ssjzwIBmoPdsYmm3e4BaftAPOSHnIcwy8f1tPpW8nslZ9DIYm_aPRgkRheBZFo_M74RQ_hb5YadD6Tbjh74q2XbbgjDJHHG9TSOGmGSLqbk1l0up6zh_3sgNAnRt-UZNXvzE/s320/ice.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Add ice <span style="font-size: large;">(sl<span style="font-size: large;">eet and/or snow and/or freezing<span style="font-size: large;"> rain are all acceptable forms of frozen <span style="font-size: large;">p</span>recipitation)</span></span></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiixvfZgsyW2UPSWMuIHBWJ2hNlNWVKnBz8v821s9_zrIQxY2cxnewwOG7_AwSPThliN4a9w-IjxC6rrBKdlZ1E5WKbtX5xv2lSbUxNkY3Kp8NISD2UDGTKvRZdwgaWCCj79lPhyphenhyphenOzl8gs/s1600/bacon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiixvfZgsyW2UPSWMuIHBWJ2hNlNWVKnBz8v821s9_zrIQxY2cxnewwOG7_AwSPThliN4a9w-IjxC6rrBKdlZ1E5WKbtX5xv2lSbUxNkY3Kp8NISD2UDGTKvRZdwgaWCCj79lPhyphenhyphenOzl8gs/s320/bacon.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">S<span style="font-size: large;">e</span>ason with <b>BACON</b><span style="font-size: large;"> (no substitutions)</span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCjX10j8kjV7ceYOuBnmKp-f5YpFT89O3I64in8ZKMrKvGL_j7r6fH1n5rd57Ra-gHrsBx4SCh7gN9D5cAPK2frSQYxBRKiHKTGUx0gC53ThaqFrnNuwZgHU0w0Mp00jWvngZyU5tnrA/s1600/fire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCjX10j8kjV7ceYOuBnmKp-f5YpFT89O3I64in8ZKMrKvGL_j7r6fH1n5rd57Ra-gHrsBx4SCh7gN9D5cAPK2frSQYxBRKiHKTGUx0gC53ThaqFrnNuwZgHU0w0Mp00jWvngZyU5tnrA/s320/fire.jpg" width="320" /> </a></td><td style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Warm gently</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBIs0GRf1LnsWlPnmvf-qa-bbf73IGcnw5kFPfcSrLPsE_nHjuDvTEM3gXt117QDxwmdql_cIjfYqdfEG8_V5A3D_lXfjIPDZO6PsV0UgRbGGKUnzU6JZg7wKWoy39HVuo6sDHnQjfdC8/s1600/libations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBIs0GRf1LnsWlPnmvf-qa-bbf73IGcnw5kFPfcSrLPsE_nHjuDvTEM3gXt117QDxwmdql_cIjfYqdfEG8_V5A3D_lXfjIPDZO6PsV0UgRbGGKUnzU6JZg7wKWoy39HVuo6sDHnQjfdC8/s320/libations.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Flavor with your favorite libation (a large and varied selection is<span style="font-size: large;"> </span>a <span style="font-size: large;">MUST! Quality preferred but not required.)</span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Write like a maniac . . . and enjoy. Here's hoping you get to join us next time.</span><br />
<br />Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-35551712919560989842012-12-14T10:14:00.001-05:002012-12-14T10:14:49.652-05:00Read It! Wrap It! Love It! -- The Cento: A Collection of Poems<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GKVni5EGL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GKVni5EGL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
I am in AWE of poets. Magicians, they are, able to distill life and experience to their often surprising essence. So maybe they're moonshiners too, stirrers of mash and sippers of elixirs. We have some poets among our Mojito sisters, so I know they'll appreciate my December must-have, and my Book Happy recommendation -- Theresa Welford's anthology <i>The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems.</i>(which you can order <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cento-Collection-Collage-Poems/dp/1597091324" target="_blank">HERE</a>).<br />
<br />
A cento is a poem composed entirely from lines of other works in a new form or order. It means "patchwork" in Latin, and like visual collages, it includes images reworked into a new vision. ANd this collection of cento poems apparently rocks. According to no less an authority than X.J. Kennedy, “Theresa Welford’s anthology of poems in that curious form the cento is a
true labor of love. In an array of patchwork poems by poets famous and
poets new, <i>The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems</i> reveals both
the dangers of the form (creating chaos) and its rich rewards when
performed with wit and creativity on the part of the poet (as in R. S.
Gwynn’s hilarious cannibalization of <i>The Norton Anthology of Poetry</i>). No one will supercede this achievement for a long time, I’d guess—maybe not for a hundred years.”<br />
<br />
An excellent gift for YOUR favorite poet.<br />
<br />
<br />
<!-- start LinkyTools script --><script src="http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=173347" type="text/javascript"></script><!-- end LinkyTools script -->Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-26280052114160041202012-10-30T14:00:00.001-04:002012-10-30T14:01:24.476-04:00And the coveted Triple Mojito Salute goes to . . .<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipeUAHCYvIyPOQjlTentEyrCXqkNGS6HNoGagZH02LXpUcwObjW7Bl6iU9EWsuRfNw5Q-kOqpCbv0EdqHa0yd7eM73P1dU-mEQ5vVhVXsQ6ZPss_lIxwMB_3qkRtGYWl5V37uUPx1eQm0/s1600/Three_mojitos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipeUAHCYvIyPOQjlTentEyrCXqkNGS6HNoGagZH02LXpUcwObjW7Bl6iU9EWsuRfNw5Q-kOqpCbv0EdqHa0yd7eM73P1dU-mEQ5vVhVXsQ6ZPss_lIxwMB_3qkRtGYWl5V37uUPx1eQm0/s320/Three_mojitos.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
We the Mojito Literary Society are ridiculously, almost illegally, proud to share the following announcement from <i>Pu</i><span class="userContent"><i>blishers
Marketplac</i>e:</span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent">SOLD: "Susanna Ives's WICKED LITTLE SECRETS trilogy, each
featuring an aspect of Victorian society that hero and heroine defy, to
Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks, by Paige Wheeler at Folio Literary
Management."</span><br />
<br />
In honor of her forthcoming trilogy, we are hoisting not one, not two, but THREE mojitos in her honor -- way to go!Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-51920005846307633402012-09-05T07:49:00.000-04:002012-09-05T07:49:13.754-04:00Book Labyrinth Art<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
When I think of heaven, it looks like this -- with a comfy chair and mojito in the middle.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/user-1517/149565859.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/user-1517/149565859.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div>
From a bird's eye view, visitors weave through the elaborate
fingerprint shaped book labyrinth, which will be on display until Aug.
25 in the Southbank Centre, a large art space situated near the Waterloo
Bridge.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/user-1517/149565757.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="292" src="http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/user-1517/149565757.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div>
Employee Tilly Shiner browses through books inside the aMAZEme
labyrinth on July 31 at The Southbank Centre in London, England. Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo used 250,000 books to
create this literary maze for the London Festival, a 3-month-long
cultural event held concurrently with the 2012 Olympics.</div>
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Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-77696379015917892372012-08-28T09:42:00.001-04:002012-08-28T09:52:26.263-04:00Review of Douglas Corleone's LAST LAWYER STANDING<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://douglascorleone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/last-lawyer-standing_1501.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://douglascorleone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/last-lawyer-standing_1501.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Available NOW on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lawyer-Standing-Kevin-Corvelli/dp/0312552289/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343793739&sr=8-1&keywords=last+lawyer+standing" target="_blank">Amazon</a>.com</td></tr>
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By Tina Whittle <br />
<br />
If there’s one character I love spending time with, it’s the heroic anti-hero. Someone whose biggest triumphs come not from conquering some nefarious villain — although he does manage to get some righteous licks in — but from conquering his own tricky, confounding, paradoxical nature. To paraphrase the newest incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, just because these guys are on the side of the angels, don’t make the mistake of thinking they <i>are</i> angels.<br />
<br />
Enter Kevin Corvelli, criminal defense attorney extraordinaire, hotshot protagonist of Douglas Corleone's third novel, <i>Last Lawyer Standing</i>. Typically fresh from some dicey shenanagin, Mr. Corvelli carries trouble in pocket. He curses, dodges, and gets knifed or hit or threatened a lot. He’s well acquainted with both pills and liquor. And he’s exactly who you’d want showing up in court for you, because whether you’re innocent or guilty, he’s there to defend you to the best of his ability.<br />
<br />
And while one sharp attorney, he’s also a crackerjack sleuth. He has to be, especially in this, his third outing after the equally sharp <i>One Man’s Paradise</i> and <i>Night on Fire</i>, the first and second novels in this series. It’s a juggling act from the first page, and Corleone is a master at keeping those balls in the air. Judges, clients, hookers, gangsters, bad cops, good cops, assassins, politicians — they all circle like sharks as Corvelli struggles to acquit his perpetual client Turi Ahina of a murder charge while simultaneously serving as counsel to the governor of Hawaii, caught up in a scandal of mistresses, money and murder most foul. Throw in a mafia scion who needs babysitting and a gorgeous AUSA with a recent divorce, and it’s all Corvelli can do to keep the cat fed.<br />
<br />
No fears. The cat does not go hungry. And readers will find satisfaction too. Corleone is a master plotter — the narrative never lets up, and the clues come faster than speedballs. The Hawaii that serves as a backdrop functions more as a character than setting, complete with its own tics and eccentricities — you might not want to live in Corvelli’s version of paradise, but you’ll find yourself enjoying a temporary visit with him as your guide. The voice is snarky and smart and authentic, self-aware but not the least bit self-righteous. I mean, how can you not love a character who says, “Somehow . . . I’d grown a conscience with respect to my motives in the courtroom, and it was going to kill my client. What the hell had I been thinking?”<br />
<br />
One big theme in the Corvelli series is the moral quandary that comes from serving the ideal of truth and justice by defending the lying and guilty. Even Corvelli has his standards, and they complicate his job and his life in ways that even his clever maneuvering can’t always evade. It’s a hard profession he’s chosen — little wonder he daydreams of tending bar — but his challenges are our gain. I’ll buy a ticket to whatever ride Corleone offers as long as Kevin Corvelli is sitting in the seat next to me.<br />
<br />
You can read more about Douglas Corleone on his website: <a href="http://www.douglascorleone.com/" target="_blank">www.douglascorleone.com.</a><br />
<br />
<b>Recommended Beverage Pairing:</b> <i>Anything</i> but red wine (read the book — you'll get it). How about a nice tall beer instead, something locally brewed? A clean and hoppy IPA perhaps?<br />
<br />
* * * * * * * * * <br />
<br />
Tina Whittle is a mystery writer living and working in the Georgia Lowcountry. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Edge-Things-Randolph-Mystery/dp/1590588193/ref=tmm_pap_title_0" target="_blank"><i>The Dangerous Edge of Things</i>,</a> her first novel, debuted February 2011 from Poisoned Pen Press, followed in March 2012 by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darker-Than-Any-Shadow-Mysteries/dp/1590585488/ref=tmm_pap_title_0" target="_blank"><i>Darker Than Any Shadow</i></a>. Described by Publisher’s Weekly as a “tight, suspenseful debut,“ this Atlanta-based series features gun shop owner Tai Randolph and corporate security agent Trey Seaver. The third book in the series —<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Ash-Bone-Randolph-Series/dp/1464200955/ref=tmm_pap_title_0" target="_blank"><i>Blood, Ash and Bone</i></a> —is available now for pre-order at Amazon. Visit <a href="http://tinawhittle.com/" target="_blank">tinawhittle.com</a> for more information, including a schedule of appearances.<br />
<br />
<br />Tinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05843235860651070479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-60582280427099697972012-02-11T17:08:00.005-05:002012-02-11T17:48:22.219-05:00Snakes, Guns, and Southern Sexy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLdAfLoflfZee2thaGL3_W8se7j1R3-T0GqWIKZ41dvV2ZsnhhwdTYnUFzXXNdQcJHhWPx-OBOEIUQjQpWlhsgBDCyOsW6SPYP4xjgnq4qLWWKRMG1hP9a9XGe-0AQ3XhF19WiSODXRW8v/s1600/Darker+Than+Any+Shadow.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 131px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLdAfLoflfZee2thaGL3_W8se7j1R3-T0GqWIKZ41dvV2ZsnhhwdTYnUFzXXNdQcJHhWPx-OBOEIUQjQpWlhsgBDCyOsW6SPYP4xjgnq4qLWWKRMG1hP9a9XGe-0AQ3XhF19WiSODXRW8v/s200/Darker+Than+Any+Shadow.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5708011180810295170" /></a><br />There's cause to crush mint and ice at the Mojito Literary Society. Our most illustrious Tina Whittle debuts her second novel in the Tai Randolph series, titled Darker Then Any Shadows. Not yet officially released, the novel has already received lavish praise from the notoriously-curmudgeony <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/tina-whittle/darker-than-shadow/">Kirkus Review</a>. And it's no wonder. <div><br /></div><div>This sexy mystery thriller is not only a cozy worthy of Sherlock Holmes sophistication, but it also journeys into the sultry and seductive world of slam poetry, with its host of eccentric characters, high financial stakes, and talents as large as egos are fragile.<div><br /></div><div>Tai Randolph is wittier, cuter and more curious then the proverbial cat. Her relationship with Trey Seaver is complicated by Trey's unraveling persona and its tendency to fall apart whenever Tai is confronted with murder -- which is often enough. Still this reader can't help but root for their strange relationship, and Whittle likes to toy with her readers in the steamy romantic scenes, using language that applies equally to murderous violence as it does to sex. The novel opens with "Be still, he said, his mouth at my ear." Watch out for the steamy end of chapter 29 and the double-entendre of the last line of dialog. A pet snake makes its debut as a murder suspect in need of a good lawyer, and rabbits disappear faster then you can say Abracadabra. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>I will refrain from writing that I couldn't put down the book because that's a cliche'. Instead I will transcribe here the email I wrote to our talented Mojito Sister at 3 in the morning when I finished reading it:</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); "> I don't read fast enough for your books: the act of reading was getting in the way of the ideal speed at which I wanted to know what happened next -- and some of the scenes were truly hot, and I totally got and cared for all these characters. The snake involvement and consequent setup was hilarious. Wow, what a writer you are!!!</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-auto; "><br /></span></div><div><span ><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); text-align: -webkit-auto; ">Click here for an </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tinawhittle.com%2Fimages%2FDARKER_THAN_ANY_SHADOW_excerpt.pdf" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); text-align: -webkit-auto; ">excerpt</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); text-align: -webkit-auto; "> or pre-order </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darker-Than-Any-Shadow-Randolph/dp/1590585461%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAIXFKFJI6IH6DO5KQ%26tag%3Dkirkus-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1590585461" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); text-align: -webkit-auto; ">here</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); text-align: -webkit-auto; ">.</span></span></div>Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2287228590575036452.post-80924109453292267842012-01-19T15:13:00.005-05:002012-01-19T15:33:18.729-05:00A New Kind of Paranormal<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_uBmV2yN9abq_r7yI5XT0LasNGk5HLLCCacNhpN8D2PkcpvRtCdvf43ZMSkTwdZfPS-3f_Wht32onItl5NvuN3Ax3TBQxYSHK-NL1OGh_bJIOXwGDARxeD7H4t6krZSXv4eaWquJRqdsw/s1600/Hitchers.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 114px; height: 171px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_uBmV2yN9abq_r7yI5XT0LasNGk5HLLCCacNhpN8D2PkcpvRtCdvf43ZMSkTwdZfPS-3f_Wht32onItl5NvuN3Ax3TBQxYSHK-NL1OGh_bJIOXwGDARxeD7H4t6krZSXv4eaWquJRqdsw/s200/Hitchers.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5699443324259408370" /></a><br />Hugo Award winner Will McIntosh astounded the Mojito Literary Society with his debut novel, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Soft-Apocalypse-Will-McIntosh/dp/159780276X">Soft Apocalypse</a></i>, which sold out from Nightshade Books on its first print run. <div><br /></div><div>Now McIntosh is back for a second round of Mojito cheeers for his new novel, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hitchers-Will-McIntosh/dp/1597803359/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327004950&sr=1-1">Hitchers</a></i>, a story about a comic strip writer who fights for control over his body when a catastrophic event unleashes the dead upon the living, and the ghost of his angry curmudgeon grandfather comes looking for him to reclaim creative control over the comic strip.</div><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 130px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidLQv7lcJcwkwNiFf5NxTCFlVszfjTDppQwZq3v8MDvakdtFN1UiHjlHeXQXuECE6syhPkrbzEiP_k7ytvkc02wRj2KNab5hdUTPpsnplMnlWNa1NrQWhyphenhyphenv29YQHsSkMPjfGlf9-YdjddN/s200/Soft+Apocalypse.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5699443564927278866" /><div><br /></div><div><br /><div> <div>The novel contains elements of the paranormal and the apocalyptic, as well as lots of comedy and romance. The characters are well developed, at times infuriating, at times funny, at times deliciously lovable, and the story is written with that nicely cultivated fast pace that has earned McIntosh his many awards.</div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div>McIntosh has already signed over rights to his Hugo Winning "Bridesicle" for a film adaptation. So make sure to get your first edition print of <i>Hitchers</i> before all copies are sold out!</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Hitchers</i> gets a first rate Yes! from this Mojito Literary sister.</div></div></div>Laura Valerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16364231390909782845noreply@blogger.com2